Meet The Mule, Or Correspondence Manager

Here’s how Russians and other scammers are getting their illicit gains back home.

The BBC website reports on a scam where (probably Russian) scammers are posting job ads claiming to be charities looking for people to forward donations made by hi-tech firms. Those responding to the job ads — usually for something like a “correspondence manager” — are then used as mules to forward goods probably obtained through fraudulent credit card usage online.

The BBC says this “re-shipping” or “correspondence manager” con has been seen in the US and is included in the FBI’s ongoing Operation Cybersweep investigation that targets hi-tech crimes. In some cases, the BBC says, the bank accounts of those who fall for the job ads are used to funnel cash from auction sales of stolen goods to the criminals.

The reason for all this? Many online commerce sites are reluctant to ship to Eastern Europe and Russia because of fraud. (The same thing has been true for the past couple of years in places like Indonesia, where many sites simply do not accept business from. In these cases, fraudsters would simply cite their normal address, but with a different country, hoping the outlet would not be smart enough to figure it out, and the courier would be , and then forward it to the right country. It usually worked.)